Monday, November 5, 2012

Hoyts lets down its audience!

Recently I was dismayed to discover that Hoyts Cinemas had gone back to the same alienating experiment which occurred several years ago of not publishing session times and requiring people to look them up online. Session times were not published in the newspaper on two successive weekends, merely a cheery note to look them up online, and as a result my plans were abandoned and Hoyts lost some business.

As there are a lot of people out there in the community who do not have smartphones or instant internet access or 24 hour ADSL and rely on the information published in the newspapers to make decisions about whether to go to the movies or not, I felt that this was a retrograde and unfair step on the part of Hoyts and wrote to them about this.

Their glib reply was that they see 'online' as the 'way of the future' and people are welcome to pick up a leaflet from the cinema with the session times or ring up the information hotline. Both of these are poor substitutes for being able to look at the session times across a number of films and cinemas 'at a glance' in your good old-fashioned newspaper.

Perhaps I was not the only one to complain, as Hoyts are now publishing session times in general every second day (and telling you to look online on the other day). I note that since Hoyts started this 'experiment', every other cinema chain (without exception) has been publishing session times daily, and I am sure they will pick up business from Hoyts as a result.

If you also have family and friends who are disadvantaged by this inconsiderate approach, then why not let Hoyts know? Only by militating for change will change occur.

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